They’re mounting a serious title challenge for the first time since Sir Alex Ferguson retired and they have improved drastically from last season when they finished sixth. On top of the that, they walked their Champions League group on their return to the competition.

Big. He missed the games against Tottenham, Liverpool and Chelsea because of injury. In the one he did play against Arsenal he was outstanding before he got sent off.

The difficulty for Mourinho is that there is no like-for-like replacement. They have got other central midfielders but no one can replicate his creativity from the centre of the pitch. It’s a big miss.